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Eco-photos: Final shuttle returns

Eco-photos of the week: July 17-23

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Photo:Bill Ingalls/NASA

Final shuttle returns

The space shuttle Atlantis touches down at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on July 21, completing its 13-day mission to the International Space Station as well as the final flight of NASA's 30-year shuttle program.

Since its first launch on Oct. 3, 1985, Atlantis took 33 flights, spent 307 days in space and traveled nearly 126 million miles. Overall, NASA sent five different shuttles on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011, covering a total of 542 million miles during 1,333 days in space.